Replacing Discrimination With Smiles And Joy

The intensity of the athletes intensity and their obvious heartfelt appreciation of the competition, their coaches, volunteers and staff made a significant impression on all who saw the 1.5K swim in the Bay of Marathon in Greece in July 2011.

One of those spectators was Tim Shriver, CEO of the Special Olympics, who spoke eloquently of the athletes and lauded the volunteers and staff who made it all happen in Greece - and every day around the world.

Whether the athlete finished first or 30th, they charged up the beach to the finish. Smiling, waving and occasionally crying with tears glistening in the sun, the competition culminated a decade of dreams and years of planning by open water enthusiasts like Kester Edwards, Jon-Paul St. Germain and Sam Silver.

The success in the Bay of Marathon led to the subsequent inclusion of an open water swimming event in the next Special Olympics World Summer Games to be held in Los Angeles, California in 2015.

But, as Tim Shriver knows all too well, the Special Olympics is not just about athletic contests. He writes, "Please read this. Some have questioned why we in Special Olympics have mounted a campaign to challenge the humiliating use of the word, "retard." Others have sometimes suggested that Special Olympics has gone beyond its mission in mounting the world's largest public health campaign to close the disparities and outright bigotry that still infect systems of care delivery for people with intellectual differences. Still others wonder why so many of us speak with such passion about how sport is needed to unleash the power of the human spirit and to attack the vicious discrimination that so often crushes innocent people unjustly.

I say to all of them, open your eyes to the discrimination that goes unchecked all around us and help us stop it now!"

The smiles, hugs of appreciation and tears of joys that were in abundance in the Bay of Marathon at the World Summer Games can and should be replicated endlessly and substituted for the discrimination that Tim points out.

The Other Shore

The Other Shore follows world record holder and legendary swimmer Diana Nyad as she comes out of a thirty-year retirement to re-attempt an elusive dream: swimming 103 miles non-stop from Cuba to Florida without the use of a shark cage. Her past and present collide in her obsession with a feat that nobody has ever accomplished. At the edge of The Devil’s Triangle, tropical storms, sharks, venomous jellyfish, and one of the strongest ocean currents in the world, all prove to be life-threatening realities. Timothy Wheeler’s documentary brings Diana Nyad’s extraordinary adventure to life as Diana sets out to prove that will and determination are all you need to make the unimaginable possible.LEARN MORE...

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An almanac is essentially a body of knowledge which is so complete that it enables people in different fields to make predictions about the future of their respective industries.

This, for example, was the purpose of the traditional farmers almanacs. It enabled farmers to determine as accurately as possible which crops to plant for the greatest harvests in a given year.

But the farmers almanac was just one example among many. There are, of course, many different kinds of almanacs.

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